Mrs. Edwards sighed heavily. 'Ah, yes, Ales, true it is; but a good servant need never seek good service. We may seek far for a good farm.'
'You don't be turned off this yet. And it's my firm belief you will be keeping the farm in spite of old Pryse. God's finger is stronger than man's arm. You wait and be patient. I've not been dreaming of Evan night after night for nothing. He seems to say, "I'm coming, I'm coming;" and I feel as if God was bringing him back, look you. I do!'
'Ah, poor, foolish Ales! your longings do create your dreams. Evan be as far to seek as our lease.'
'May be so, and may be not. I do be feeling as if he was as near and as warm almost as the loaf just baked, look you. And I feel, I feel'--
'You do _look_ half out of your mind, Ales,' said Mrs. Edwards, in grave rebuke, rising from her hopeless quest and locking the coffer again. 'This be no time to talk of foolish dreams.'
'Mother,' called Jonet from the bedroom they were searching, 'there be a strange man with a bundle on a stick coming over the stile, and he's dripping wet.'
Ales screamed, darted out by the open door, and before Mrs. Edwards could follow she was clasped in the arms of a rough-looking fellow, and crying out, 'I knew, I knew! Thank God!' In another moment she was sobbing and laughing hysterically on his breast in the reaction of her strange excitement.
'Name o' goodness, that never do be you, Evan?' burst from Mrs. Edwards in unmitigated amazement.
[Illustration: LONG-LOST EVAN HAD COME BACK.--_See page 252._]
'Ay, ay, it's me for certain,' was answered cheerily, as the sturdy, unshaved man brushed past her, carrying his limp sweetheart into the kitchen and grandfather's stiff-backed chair, heedless of the wet trail he left upon the floor.
Picture the excitement. Strong-minded Ales in hysterics! Jonet and Cate rushing about wildly, and shouting out that long-lost Evan had come back! William and Rhys hurrying in, astonished and delighted, followed by Davy, for once in a hurry; and Evan, loth to release Ales, puzzled to find hands for them all to shake at once, and equally puzzled how to compose Ales, who is sobbing and laughing by turns.
Housewifely instinct, or a peculiar fume in her nostrils, acts as a restorative. 'The bread's burning,' she gasps and Cate presses forward to the rescue of the scorching loaves, forgotten in the confusion and excitement.